Heavy rain has pushed Moody County’s harvest back and left it dependent on hopes for dry, warmer weather.
“A lot of the fields have water standing,” said Paul Antoine who farms between Egan and Trent. “It’s going to set us back.”
He got about 5.5 inches of rain over a couple of days last week. Reports from some areas were as high as 7 inches.
Antoine, like other farmers in the area, spent the soggy days working on getting equipment ready. His concern for the bean harvest is that if fields are wet at all, equipment will plug.
“You’ve got to stop. Once you get the bean head muddy, that spot bothers all the time,” he said.
Lawrence Johnson, who farms 11 miles south and a half mile east of Flandreau, said he had started harvesting some low spots before it rained. Now that ground is under water after he got 5.75 inches of rain last week.
“I went from getting started to a standstill. It’s going to be that way until the ground dries out.
It’ll take a week at least,” he said.
When he planted beans last spring, he planned for a staggered maturity, but all of the fields will be ready by the time he can get in them. If the ground doesn’t dry up enough, he will start corn first because those fields don’t have to be as dry to combine.
“It was looking like we had a pretty good crop,” he said of his bean yields. So far, the rain hasn’t hurt production.
“We haven’t lost any yield yet. That danger is still there,” he said. “If they get dry again and then wet again, that does become a danger. They will pop open eventually.”
This isn’t the wettest fall Johnson has seen in his 40 years of farming.
“In 1979, we combined beans on ice that year,” he said. In September of 1986, the area flooded.
“It’s been bad before. We lived through it,” he said.
This time of year, chances are slimmer for a hot, dry, windy day to help the land dry up so farmers can get the crop out. There is only 12 hours of daylight each day at this point and it is dwindling.
“We can dry up in the spring because the sun is at a better angle, and there’s more heat,” said Tom Ehrichs, a farmer near Egan and a Moody County Commissioner. “This thing can work out. We need a drought during October and November. That’s what we need.”
Ehrichs, who was fixing his combine late last week, said he was waiting for his soybeans to mature but other farmers in the area had started harvesting before the rain fell. Now his crop is ready and the ground isn’t.
“We need sunshine and some breeze to get things ready to rumble,” he said.
Recent rains were so heavy they also went over some local roads. Pipestone Creek went over a county gravel road at a spot on 237th Street about 12 miles southeast of Flandreau in Lone Rock Township, said Marty Skroch, assistant to the Moody County commission.
Water also went over a paved road for a couple hours Thursday night on 486th Avenue north of the Ward corner. There was no damage, he said.
